Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Nuit Blanche

This is me and my daughter's friend, Amber, at Nuit Blanche in Toronto. (this photo is funny for me because my eyes are puffy: my daughter and I had gone to see the movie Into The Wild and seriously had been crying for like, three hours. We have a gag order not to ever discuss the movie again. It's right up there with crying gag orders Saving Private Ryan, Titanic, and Breaking The Waves. We will NOT talk about those movies ever...or we'll start crying all over again ha ha)

Nuit Blanche is an all night event where artists have set up exhibits inside and outside...in galleries and in alleys. It is in so many ways one of the best responses I've ever seen to art in my life. It is unbelieable how many people go out to see the exhibits and works. It's a terrific amount of fun and the artwork is really good. It's funny because I have a couple of friends who get really excited and go all night to see stuff and they are always gushing...Candy you have to go look at all the art.

I'm always, like, well you see, for one night out of the year...you understand how I feel every day! I go to look at art all the time, I am either making something, thinking about making something or filming something or thinking about filming something...or I am looking at something someone else made or filmed.

I am so glad that people are excitied about art and walk around the city to look at it and stay up all night!!! I hope that it awakens them to doing it more often and buying some art too. There is a lot of art available that is a good price and can be taken home!

In 2006, Nuit Blanche came to Toronto. (click on grey text to see this years schedule) Christophe Girard, Deputy Mayor of Paris, who dreamt up the idea of Nuit Blanche in 2002, travelled there to help launch the event, praising its citizens for their love of "the magic and the mysteries of the night". Attendance at this inaugural event was estimated by City Hall to have been 425,000 people; the following year almost doubled that, attracting 800,000 revelers.

Stagg and I hit the Chicago version in 2007.

We didn't plan on it per se...we had gone downtown (click on grey text to see previous post on Alexie) to hear author Sherman Alexie speak and then remembered about the all night event so we stayed downtown and went for drinks and walked around a bit. The reception in the States was quite different than in Canada...

From Wikipedia:

Not all reactions were favorable. Many internet bloggers spoke of the swarms of people overcrowding the event. Looptopia 2007 also fell on an extremely cold night for mid-May in Chicago.Although it is legally closed every night, Millennium Park, a public outdoor park next to the loop, was by police control completely closed off at midnight.Few restrooms were made available for the large number of people who attended the late night event. Those that were available were in centralized locations.Sound system inadequate—many people could not hear the music performed on stage at the Daley Plaza.Some museums and other spaces closed their doors at midnight or earlier contrary to the billing and spirit of the evening.